Archive Result

Soundfile 19870100GRRTOMLOVCOM_10

Speaker Gelek Rimpoche/Robert Thurman

Location Omega Institute

Topic Love and Compassion

Transcriber Jill Neuwirth

Date 6/20/2024

RT: …You know the great existentialists, you know, the Camus of yogis. Bam! Nothingness. And then, beyond nothingness and non-nothingness even finally, but then you’d be out of that, you’d be two billion years later. Sixteen planets would have arisen and then fallen, your mother and cousins and everything would have been crocodiles and dinosaurs, eleven hundred thousand hundred million times. And you would have been like, bllll- zonked out, but you would not have enjoyed a second of it, it would have been nothing to you. And all you’d have would be the threshold in and the threshold out. And you’re back in the same problem. Wasted so much time. During that time, if you’d practiced the profound vajrayana, you could have attained Vajradharahood twenty zillion times. Am I right, Rimpoche? Rimpoche: Yes. RT: And after having attained, not just because you enjoy the attaining Vajradharahood, but from having the position of Vajradhara you could have helped your mothers trillions and quadrillions of times. You could have made boundless and limitless buddhaverses with that, not universe or multiverse, how about buddhaverse? Millions of buddhaverses, everything turning through Buddha. Buddhaverses. Instead of that, you were all zonked out like the ultimate kind of quietistic junkie on the big nihilism trip. But experiential one. So, the point is, I don’t mean to digress, but in the process of seeking selflessness, there’s always a temptation to find the unfindability of what you’re looking for, and to think you’ve had something because you get a big experience of nothing, and think that’s a big thing. All that is, is- that is a big thing, actually. It’s considered a very great threshold to achieve. But actually, what you learn there is not that reality is nothing, because reality is not nothing. I mean, that’s obvious, even to say that is a self-contradictory statement. But what you’ve learned there is that the power of the mind is so great that it can make a vast experiential realm out of nothing. And fool you totally. That means, when you learn that, you then realize that all the time right now, you’re being totally fooled by your mind. Your mind is presenting you a completely distorted picture of existence. A process based on which completely distorted picture of existence you are unable to effectively interact with existence with others, and with things, and with environments, and therefore you are constantly suffering. It’s like, naturally, if you don’t know where you are, if you’re trying to play football wearing, in the dark, wearing dark glasses, and try to make a touchdown, you’re going to get trampled. Right? Imagine, trying to like run for touchdown in the dark with dark blinders on. You’d get killed.

[0:02:56.2] So we have a blinder of a misunderstanding in a reality that we’re distortedly imagining, which is other than we imagine it, and we’re trying to interact with that reality, and therefore for some reason, everything goes wrong. Suffering, dukkha that is. Everything becomes a pain. So the way to fix it is to see it’s nature, and then we can interact with it effectively, and then there will no longer be a pain, it might even be a bliss. In the buddhaverse, is the bliss. (Speaks to Rimpoche in Tibetan) [0:03:31.9] So he says, why is there ultimately nothing to be found? He says, the body is the issue of the four main elements. And in these elements there is no owner, and no agent. You know, we have agent “I do”, you know, version of responsibility agent. The find agent. I love that Woody Allen movie, you would have liked it Rimpoche, there’s this Woody Allen movie, I forgot the name of it, where Woody Allen and a bunch of other movie actors are in the brain of this person. You know, they’re up in the brain, and there’s like a big computer console, and screens, you know, and they’re driving the person? Like it was like an airplane or something? And then Woody Allen volunteers to be a sperm, because the person is having sex. So then Woody Allen has to jump out of the control room, down through a long thing and goes out to become- (Starts laughing) so it’s like, the agent in the person, it’s a picture of the agent and the person being like little homunculuses, who are like sitting in the control room, like up in the forehead or something, looking out through the eyes and driving you around, you know? We laugh, but actually different ego imaginations and constructs, there are such in different ideologies like there’s a little person, a little soul who’s like a little homunculus person who sort of drives you around, who has you on puppet strings. But look for him, look for that inner theater of operation, the theater in which your agent, your soul or something is operating you like a little mini you. Try to find it. It’s a very strange experience when you suddenly realize that you’re unoperated. And when you move your hand, no one’s operating it. It’s just moving. It’s very strange, because we have all sorts of weird conceptions about how we operate. Only when we begin to look into it do we begin to find something. There is no self in this body. And, except for arbitrary insistence on self, ultimately no “I” which can be said to be sick can be apprehended. Therefore, thinking I should not adhere to any self, and I should rest in the knowledge in the root of illness, he should abandon the conception of himself as a personality, and produce the conception of himself as a thing. Or a process, you might want to say, in modern language. Thinking this body is an aggregate of many things. When it is born, only things are born. When it ceases, only things cease. These things have no awareness or feeling of each other. When they are born they do not think, “I am born.” When they cease, they do not think, “I cease.” So this is the way by which transcending by reaching the experience that called in Zen, the experience where the mask comes off. Or they even have a more graphic way, the experience where your face falls off.

[0:06:41.6] This is pretty easy experience to achieve. Because we have a certain sense of our self as a personality. And no, we’re operating our face, you know we’re smiling, we’re us, we look in the mirror and make sure it’s us. And we sort of- we’re operating this face. And then suddenly when we find it, there is no like (Inaudible) [0:07:02.0] you know? There’s no like, us that is like the mirror reflection that comes out on our face, it’s like suddenly the face is just itself. It’s just like the membrane between this part and that part. And it’s said to be an experience as if your face fell off. As if your face had been a mask that fell off. And at first it’s a bit startling, and then it’s said to be a tremendous relief. You suddenly feel, although you might feel as if you’re sort of out there like you’d lost your pants or something, or lost your shirt. Or your tie, at least. Ultimately, it’s a tremendous experience of relief, there’s no two of you out there, there’s just one of you there. But still, this experience is only- this is what is called the experience of personal selflessness, to a certain degree that he’s describing. So the sick bodhisattva then begins to depersonalize, impersonalize, himself as “I am sick.” And then he says, well there’s a boil here, oh there’s a wound here, or there’s a pain over here. The pain is impinging on those nerves, it’s running up this neurons are going up here and there, then the brain is going ding ding dong, and then it’s going over to the conceptual bank over here, and some people are filing medical report, and this one sending endorphins, and doing this and that. It’s like this vast elaborate process. And somehow, the person is aware that what I’m used to calling myself “I” is sick, but it’s an impersonal process, and sort of “I’m not sick”, and sort of not freaking out on “I’m sick! I’m sick!” But still, there’s something that they’re still doing from Vimalakirti’s point of view. They’re still indulging in the sense of what is known, the self of the things that make themselves up. They’re still thinking there’s a real pain, there’s a real neuron, there’s a real arm, there’s a real bone, there’s a real brain. There’s a real process, there are, as the Buddhists would say- these real aggregates of matter, sensations, conceptions, volitions, and consciousnesses. And that they have selves. Now, that first sounds funny cause we sort of habitually think of self as referring to personality, or eight living beings, but then remember, we say the house itself, the car itself, the table itself, the world itself. The self is simply a reflexive particle in the language, which simply sort of refers back to something in a way that we habitually feel as if it is attaching itself to the essence of the thing. So you see the table itself, it’s sort of like saying the essence of the table- its own essence. Itself is its very self. So we do have an idea, actually, even though our language, that things have a kind of self. And when we see a tripod, we feel that there’s a tripod itself, and when we say the tripod itself, you say bring me the tripod, and somebody comes and brings you this microphone- no, no, no. I want this tripod, they bring you this handle, no, no, I want the tripod. They bring you this foot- no, no, I want the tripod. They bring you the one leg, or one piece, the rubber thing, no, no, the tripod itself.

[0:10:09.0] Then they say, okay. They want to make sure not to leave anything out so they take a big hammer and they smash it all to little pieces and they put it in a box. All the dust. They say here, here’s the whole thing. No, no- I wanted the tripod itself. But there’s all the pieces. So we think there’s something in there that is the tripod. That when you say tripod, it really hits something. It’s like nothing. When we say nothing we think it’s sort of nothing goes out and finds something, hits it, you know? Like search and recover in a computer program, goes and finds a reference. Matches up against the code, you know? Dit dit dit and dot dot dot and that’s what it is, then finds something. That’s how we live. We live in a world like- but actually we know that there’s nothing like that. Now, especially it’s a- must have been awful in ancient time to explain this to people who had ideas of indivisible atoms, of platonic essences. They must have been really bugged and freaked out about it. Modern science where there is hardly anything to hold on to, everything is a buzzing, blooming confusion, it’s almost too easy. The only danger there really is to take it as nothingness. To reify the absence of everything and be a nihilist. That is a big danger. That’s the opposite, huge danger, we all have really very deeply ingrained. I promise. But we can easily understand that there’s no tripodhood, tripod essence. Tripodity. There’s nothing. We could have a tripod with only two. We could stand it this way and that way. We could dig a trench with it. The tripod is merely its use. As Wittgenstein said, a thing’s essence is its use. And the pragmatist William James, I mean, there’s just something that in a way, our modern science has enabled people to deal with in a way it’s funny, it’s like a blessing of nihilism of modern culture. On this level, there’s a certain blessing in it the previous generations did not have. When they thought of the Platonic essences and all different forms of that, they really got wigged out. So now, when the bodhisattva begins to think in this way, he says, furthermore, he should understand thoroughly the conception of himself as a thing, by cultivating the following consideration. Just as in the case of the conception of self, so the conception of thing is also a misunderstanding. And this misunderstanding is also a grave sickness. I should free myself from this sickness, and should strive to abandon it. This is now seeing through the world as process, seeing through the world as impersonal things. Seeing through the self of impersonality, having previously seen through the self of personality. Or as Buddhists would say, seeing through the objective self, having seen, gotten rid of- or rather getting rid of the objective self habit, having previously gotten rid of the subjective self habit. Although the deep psychological teaching of the Buddhist doctors about this is that ultimately, neither subjective self habit nor objective self habit, either one can eliminated until the other is totally eliminated at least on the instinctual level. Finally both are only eliminated simul- you think you’ve gotten rid of the personality, but that was only the coarse personality habit.

[0:13:35.7] There’s what they call subtle personality habits are more profound. What is the elimination of this sickness, he goes on to say. It is the elimination of egoism and possessiveness. That is to say, the I habit, what is known as I, I, I, you know, I this, I that, I go, I come. And then mine habit, mine, mine, mine. Right? Once there’s I, then there’s a lot of mine. Egoism and possessiveness. What is the elimination of egoism and possessiveness? It is the freedom from dualism. What is freedom from dualism? It is the absence of involvement with either the external or the internal. What is absence of involvement with either external or internal? It is non-deviation, non-fluctuation, and non-distraction from equanimity. What is equanimity? There’s the equality of everything from self to liberation. Why? Because both self and liberation are void. How can both be void? As verbal designations they both are void. And neither is established in reality. That doesn’t- note that this says void. Doesn’t say they are nothing. It says they are void. What is meant by void is that, although they are there, they are devoid of intrinsic reality, and they possess only designative or conceptually constructed reality. Imagined reality, that means. So they are there as imaginations. Now this is very important. Because in the time of nihilism for example, in the temptation of nihilism, in the temptation of finding the unfindable, the key to realize is that the self is never destroyed, The realization of selflessness does not destroy the self. You know otherwise spiritual people, you know big yogis, it's kind of like they’re sort of astronauts, they’re going to jump out, or parachutists, you know, they’re going to jump out of the plane and sort of lose their self, will destroy it, kind of. And there may be some sensations like that because of these habitual reifications of realms of being and nothingness. And the self habit entrenches itself by frightening you that if you see through the self habit, and you see through the false conceptualization, the exaggeratedly presumed self, you will lose your self and you’ll fall into a void, a real void, that is to say, a nothing. It wants to frighten you that way. So but what is the parachute here? So there’s a kind of jumping that goes on, but what the parachute is, is direct is the knowledge of what is known as the conventional self. The imagined self, the verbalized self. The constructed self. And that is I. We can say I. You know, for example, Ken Wilbur has a very beautiful thing which he calls the pre-trans fallacy which Western psychologists misunderstood Buddhism completely and most still do. By confusing the pre-egoic state of an infant who cannot yet organize his aggregates, his or her aggregates, because cannot pronounce “I.” And sort of organized it’s nervous system, you know, control the sphincters. Control the impulses. Because cannot say “I.”

[0:17:05.6] Confusing that pre-egoic state with enlightenment. Which comes from having a very powerful ego definition, and then seeing the whole structure and status of ego definition and transcending falsely exaggerated ego structure, while still completely free to use conventional ego organization. And this pre-trans fallacy was why people say, why for example, the translation egolessness or selflessness was a big disaster actually, was a bad mistake made by certain translators in past, because it confirmed these psychologists in thinking that the enlightened person is like a baby who’s going to wet his pants. Because he doesn’t know- I’m having an impulse now in my bladder, you know? There was no I, no ego. Naturally people say when they see someone go into a dharma center, some psychoanalyst, they say, be careful son, don’t go over there. I don’t know if you want to go over there and do that meditating. Because they think the guy is going to become a vegetable. Buddha is a vegetable. I don’t know who I am. I? What is I? Because they have no ego. Buddha has a great ego. Actually, it said Buddha has a diamond ego. Tremendously useful ego Buddha has. Because again, as usual, because he knows it’s both there and not there. So he never gets exaggerated about it, at the same time is totally responsible to its being there. He never cops out by saying, oh, it’s all so mysterious, I guess maybe I’m not here! Maybe this person I’m killing is not there. Maybe it’s just god is here, so I’ll just do it. Which is a kind of psychotic way of being there and not there. As you know, that’s the definition of a psychotic, isn’t it? Person who is not responsible for their action, because when it suits them, they’re not there. When it suits them, they can’t find their ego. When it’s unbearable the responsibility of what they’re doing, they’re not there. So then they can do anything. In fact, there are some people who say, some radicals who say, far be it for me to say so, but the Descartesian Western culture which is playing around with atoms and the chemicals, and the ozone and the poison and the whole thing, the “I think therefore I am” culture, which is like the subjectivity of Western man who thinks that he’s this point on a Cartesian graph. Which as you know, a point on a Cartesian graph is not there, you know that. You realize that? Anything you see a dot is not a point, it’s a small circle. By definition the point is definitely not there. To have perfect position, it can’t be there. Has no size. So therefore, this western man who is tampering, you know, like putting like nuclear reactors on top of San Andreas fault, (Inaudible, Audience laughs) [0:19:56.5] blowing off this and that, is not there. Doing all this- doesn’t matter, oh you’re better dead than red, because somehow we’re not there psychologically. This is a psychotic culture.

[0:20:09.9] Clearly. A culture that is very active and doing a lot of things, but somehow ultimately, when it comes to responsibility, is not there. The native peoples of this world certainly think about the industrial races as behaving like that. The way they are destroying nature. They’re just not there. Nature, there’s no spirit in nature, you know? But I don’t- I’m not that radical. I’m not there myself. I’m a Westerner. Psychotic. I think that, you know, I won’t have to pay off my credit cards when I die. No problem, American Express can never find me in a future life. (All laugh) Rimpoche: What guarantee do you have for that? RT: Exactly! Well, psycho doesn’t need a guarantee. Someone who’s not there, their guarantee is already ahead of time, they’re just not there. So they can do what they like. They have a false courage, in a way. The Western nihilist does. Right? That’s why they then commit suicide, do all these things because they’re not there. And by killing themselves, they’re just returning to what they think is the reality of their condition, which is not being there. Which has become now no longer comfortable to be there, for whatever reason. Yes? Audience: I’m not a qualified theologian (Inaudible) [0:21:34.4] I have read a book just a month ago which was written just in the time of Descartes, which was the problem of lack of faith. It’s written by the Harvard divinity school and it’s a whole collection of all the thinkers of that time which most of them we never heard, and they had a terrible problem at that time between the spirit and (Inaudible) [0:21:59.1] because they didn’t want to accept the medieval concept of spirit as being something was in the heart of the church. They wanted to make it their personal property too. But there was a (?) [0:22:15.9] and they returned back to the Greek philosophers to seek a kind of- and I know that was Descartes problem when he said I think I am he was referring to the (Inaudible) [0:22:32.2] But it confuses future generations. RT: Right. Well, David Humes early thought it confused Descartes. Who was his near contemporary. He thought he was cuckoo, you know? Because these people who can’t find something and therefore then they can proclaim that it’s definitely there because they can’t find it, I can’t understand such a person, Hume said. Nothing else if you didn’t find would you therefore be sure it was there? Doesn’t make any sense. This one thing that you decide can’t be found, then you say that’s there. Hume, who was his contemporary, thought he was cuckoo. And I agree, and also what you’re saying I think is another point. Which I totally also accept. I actually learned this from His Holiness, actually. I was little bit more radical anti-Western at the time, and he said, that actually the nihilism aspect, although very dangerous to us all, and especially to those who hold it, in some way represents a step of growth. Is a sort of overreaction against sort of, naïve soul theories and institutional structures, you mentioned the church, the imprisonment of reason and the human wisdom by sort of all sorts of dogmas. And in breaking free from that sort of breaks too far and goes and gets a little bit false courage to stand up against all the anathema and all the condemnation and excommunication and sending to hell a lot of heavy pressure, and gets a false courage from nothingness.

[0:24:01.0] So then that’s, you know, hell can fall into nothing, its everything- gets a little bit of false courage from that. But this, to some sense, is a part of a maturing process. And so then the next step, and therefore, for example, as I just said, it is and away from that nihilism, that we have a science that therefore makes it actually rather easy for us to understand what’s known as objective selflessness in Buddhism. The fact that objects, atoms, have no self, that there’s no core to an atom, that there’s no indivisible atom. That they just keep coming apart endlessly. That if you really look for anything, analysis will dissolve it totally. Right? Which is the teaching of shunyata, but in a time prior to science as it is now, it was very hard for the common person to understand. And therefore, for example, you have statements like Nagarjuna, Buddha himself, remember Rimpoche quoted originally, he said after he attained enlightenment he said, oh, this is great, it’s the greatest elixir anybody ever tasted. But I can’t tell anybody about it, they won’t know what I’m talking about. I’m just going to hang out in the jungle. This profound elixir. Because no one will understand, Buddha said. Nagarjuna said, look out for shunyata. A wrongly understood shunyata is like a misunderstood magical formula, chemical formula. Or like a poison snake, falsely held. Like a wrongly-used formula, or a poison snake help by the tail which then whips around and bites you. And what he meant by that was- and so therefore, be very careful about shunyata, don’t teach shunyata, don’t get into shunyata if you’re not ready for it. Which he said in terms of the fact that it can be misunderstood as a nothingness, too easily. The danger is that you become a nihilist. And then Tsongkhapa goes on about how, for example, five hundred years ago, in which our more modern Buddha, our more modern Nagarjuna who’s the most modern almost one, the last who made the philosophy like modern, really, Our Renaissance buddha, let’s put it. Contemporary of Leonardo Da Vinci. He said, oh yeah, it’s difficult, shunyata is very difficult, he proceeded to talk about it all the time. But even he still was in some respects a traditional culture. Today, and maybe Rimpoche will excommunicate me for this, or he will criticize me maybe, but I would say, that in the modern time, in the modern educated person, I don’t mean with the Bible belt or necessarily off some place, I mean the modern educated people, if you don’t immediately address the issue of shunyata, you are doing them a big disservice. It is not a matter that we should wait till we are ready for shunyata in the modern educated person, it’s a matter that we desperately need emptiness. Because it’s not that we have- we don’t any longer have the danger of becoming a nihilist. We are born and raised as nihilists. I’m talking about the educated one. We are raised with a science, you know, that’s why the creationists are freaking out about putting Darwin putting creation in the bible, because they realized that people are born and raised as nihilists. Therefore, they have already been bitten by the snake. All of modern culture. They are bitten. They are poisoned by nihilism. Therefore, the only medicine for that poison is shunyata, emptiness. Selflessness. And therefore, they don’t need Buddhism. They don’t need another religion to sign in on some more cards and some more things, they don’t need that. Let them use their own religion for example, The Dalai Lama always says. Whether or not they understand it well. But they need emptiness.

[0:27:39.9] Emptiness means relativity. They need to find their relationship to reality again, out of that nihilism. They are dangerous to themselves and to others in that nihilism. In that sense of unrelatedness from the universe. Audience: In that case, (Inaudible) such a long time in China, wasn’t that from the Buddhist idea of (Inaudible) RT: Who? Audience: (Inaudible) RT: It could be. Teilhard de Chardin [0:28:20.0] The man of omega. Omega means the end of the world, you know? This omega we’re at- we’re at the institute of the end of the world. (Laughter) It’s a Catholic philosopher who talked about sort of history reaching a certain final destiny. In the omega point, he used to talk about. Like Shambhala, kind of. Audience: Because he was an anthropologist, and also he found the Peking man which was one of the fundamental issues. And he’s the only one in the Catholic religion who mentioned cosmology which now everyone is using this. RT: Yeah, I think that both Spinoza and Leibniz rather, who lived a lot in China, Hume who worked for- and Mill, J.S. Mill, who worked for the East India company, I think that the history of the influence of Eastern philosophies in general upon Western European philosophies of the Enlightenment and the post-Enlightenment and so forth is not yet known, fully. It will shatter the European hubris about how we are the center of the universe when it really is fully known. So I would say yes, but I don’t know well enough (Inaudible) [0:29:36.4] to Chardin’s particular thing, I think probably he was very influenced by this fellow Matteo Ricci who was a Jesuit who lived out in China and was very popular among the Chinese. But who was eventually called back to Rome because he became so appreciative of Chinese culture that he kind of fitted Christianity into it, rather than trying to fit it into Christianity. He was having Confucius come out there with Jesus on the altar, you know, Mary, Jesus, Confucius, you know? He was sanctifying them, he was trying to bring all the bodhisattvas and everybody, he was making a- because he realized that you know, you don’t have to be this narrow European thing, he was like doing that. So then the pope got nervous and called him back. Audience: Where can I find (Inaudible) RT: Ricci. Oh there’s a nice book by Johnathan Spence called The Memory Castle of Matteo Ricci. By Spence. So I think we more or less fixed up first movement through wisdom. I certainly fixed up my time, although we didn’t start until late. So what do you think of my theory? If we could have a few questions, maybe, before we meditate. What do you think about my theory about how shunyata now, in the case of the educated person, is actually in contradiction to Nagarjuna’s prescription and previous ideas about it, it is almost an essential medicine. Rimpoche: Well, it’s very hard for me to say, just now. Because I don’t think I really know well enough of the Western problems, and attitude, and mind of the people. RT: Right. Rimpoche: So it’s very hard for me to comment. I’d be very cautious. RT: Yes, I’m sure! You see the thing is though, see, Tibetan- the one reason is, see Tibetans, no matter how much trouble they have, no matter even in their society some problems they had, they all lived in the hand- you know like that Allstate insurance, you know that thing? Well they have this Avalokitesvara who is The Dalai Lama, incarnated as the Dalai Lama, Avalokitesvara, you know om mani peme hung, this om mani peme hung guy. Om mani peme hung has a thousand hands. You know, like Allstate Insurance, you know that one, you’re in good hands with Allstate, you know? And Tibetans are all in good hands all the time. There’s no, should we talk about the first day of a certain faith. That the force of enlightenment and therefore compassion of selflessness is more powerful than the force of egotism and therefore, evil. And therefore, that these bodhisattvas are around them. That they are living in a time of fulfillment, like they’re living in the second Jerusalem, sort of thing, you know?

[0:32:18.4] Even though there might be some dirt in it, you know there’s some dirt here, plumbing’s not working, some- they don’t really care. Imagine if Armageddon came and went and then we were all in the second Jerusalem according to say western notion of history, we were beyond omega. We were in the New Age. Well, you know, plumbing didn’t work, some dirt, like you know, missed a meal here and there, it didn’t have like, perfect something, even had to ride a horse again- would we care? Would anybody care? Absolutely not. So Tibetans were in a kind of paradise. And a Tibetan feels, you know, whether they live or die, whether they have achieved or not, this thousand hands are around them. (Rimpoche speaks to RT in Tibetan) [0:33:00.3] They believe that Avalokitesvara took a vow, like Avalokitesvara is like Jesus for the Tibetans. You have to realize this. But there’s certain difference. He didn’t say that, you know, I came, and they didn’t recognize me, they wasted me, and now I’ll be back, sometime. And then you have to worry when is coming. Different theories and some mystics maybe meet ahead of time and some a very few. Tibetans, their Avalokitesvara is also kind of Jesus, but- he got wasted then he came back right away. Not only he came back right away, he said I’m here in a thousand bodies. Million bodies if necessary. I’ll have even thousand hands, like some kind of weird caterpillar of compassion. Creeping around with his hands and putting on medicines all over the place. And doing it precisely with an eyeball in each hand to see what it’s doing, like some kind of robot knows exactly where each hand is because it has an eye in the hand. Even the ones back here, it knows. And belief that therefore all spiritual Tibetans believe that every spiritual teacher in Tibet is the emanation of Avalokitesvara. Anytime anyone teaches them dharma, it’s Avalokitesvara teaching them, they believe that. So therefore, they have a comfortable faith. And a positive mind is in the basis of their life. So they feel that the world is a good world. And it shouldn’t be wrecked and so forth, and so, something like that, so people like that- right. Maybe that’s why they like Ronald Reagan. Happy go lucky. Something’s better everywhere, or they would have loved Calvin Coolidge who used to the same. I think he’s incarnation of Calvin Coolidge myself. Coolidge just before the Depression used to say, oh something’s better everywhere, then they had the Great Depression, you know, stock market crashed so everybody jumped out the window, you know? Oh, it’s better! Oh, yes, okay. Nice! Anyway, never mind, that’s a joke. But Tibetans are like that so therefore, when someone like that, of course, you have to be cautious you talk about philosophy that threatens to dissolve even good and evil. That goes take it to the brink of the void, that makes you achieve not- go beyond the void for the voidness of the void, so that you sort of go through the void and discover the new fullness now, no longer out of faith, but out of wisdom, you now know that it’s good, not just believe that it’s good, you see. But to get from believe that it’s good to know that it’s good, you have to go through this dangerous crisis of doubt and many things, so it’s natural you’re cautious about that. But the Americans don’t understand is, I mean, you do, but you don’t, when you say you’re cautious, what you don’t understand is that the Western person is born out on the edge of the galaxy. There’s no good, no bad, nothing, they don’t know who- for all they know, Katherine Weinberger’s controlling their destiny. Ollie North. They- look who they look to.

[0:35:58.9] The idea is that there’s a benevolent power is gone. Look at Judaism. Their faith- look the Holocaust- would have shattered mostly their faith, except for a few mystics. So the idea that there’s sort of, Voltaire in the eighteenth century, he wrote this best of all possible worlds business, Candide, made him look like a fool. So, the Westerner is deeply gripped with doubt from youth. And they’re mostly think that nothing is there, and they feel that we’re sort of not part of things, and they feel alienated, and isolated. Alienated means you’re separated from the world. We’re somehow apart from all of this, aren’t we? Well, Omega Institute, Esalen Institute is a big thing to feel a part of things, right? Then advertising, be a part of it, you know? They sell because we all don’t feel a part of anything, by our ingrained culture. It’s a big achievement for us to suddenly see a sense of unity, to feel connected to a relativity, and then, the suspicion that it might be a positive relativity, transcends mostly our ability. Audience: I’d just like to add a comment in this general discussion of egotism versus relativity and connectedness, and that would be to quote Lily Tomlin, in her play Searching For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Trudy the bag lady who’s been accused of being psychotic says, well, they tell me that means I’m out of touch with reality. And Trudy says, so what’s reality anyway but a collective hunch? RT: (Laughs) That’s a good one. That’s very good. That’s like the collective minefield of sentient beings, that’s right out of Vimalakirti play, absolutely. Audience: So there we go, right into pop culture, I mean, the stuff is out there in the culture if we choose to- RT: Oh certainly. Well that’s the prime mental activity of all sentient beings. Rimpoche: Here comes the prime mental activities. RT: That’s it. That is the prime- actually I have a new thing on prime mental activity, if we’re in questions now, Rimpoche will like this. You’ll like it too. I was thinking about the Buddhists had a person named Dignaga. Dignaga which meant the war elephant. Dignaga actually is a war elephant. And chog je (Tibetan phrase) means it charges in every direction, it’s actually a war elephant. Meaning he was a war elephant of philosophy. You know, war elephant in ancient time was like a tank, you know? A pretty good philosopher that means. And Dignaga, he preceded the epistemology of human Kant, of eighteenth century America- lo le me chu (Speaks to Rimpoche) [0:38:46.4] (Rimpoche laughs) And he preceded this epistemology, and he came to understanding of the powerful formative power of ideas the way Kant did. And he realized sort of the thing in itself was somehow transcendental to constructed perception. Sorry, I don’t want to confuse many of you about Kant, I just want to say the one point is he therefore made this beautiful thing totally in line with enlightenment, and yet totally as a technical epistemology. And that is, that all living beings perceive actual reality, all the time, with all of their senses, they’re always in touch with reality with all of their senses. Including their mental sense. And yet, simultaneously, because they never- because that perception of their senses in some sense unconstructed, they’re all the time investing their effort and energy into the conceptualization of all of that data. And all of the conceptualization of all of that data is all distorted, so that all living beings are simultaneously totally in touch with actual reality and in that sense, you could say their senses are totally enlightened at all times, totally reaching dan den ten pa (?) [0:40:21.1] of course this is not in a way a final system of Buddhist philosophy, but aspects of it are still used, even in higher systems, but it’s the most important type of epistemology, you know a way of how you know, analysis of knowledge.

[0:40:33.3] And so, what this means in a graphic sense so it’s not mysterious to you, for example it means, that when you see something like, you know when someone hits you on the head, or when maybe you’re really drunk, or when someone has slipped you a mickey, or when you have been meditating and for a moment your stream of ideas is not flowing in a normal way. And sometimes, have you ever had the experience you suddenly saw something that looked like suddenly most amazing thing you’d ever seen in the universe? Any people of the sixties will know what I’m talking about. (Audience laughs) And other people may or may not, but from their own- because there’s other ways of doing that, you know, but suddenly- wow! There’s like the whole like galaxy’s in the rug. You ever have that experience? And yet, every time when you try to figure what it is, it turns into something else. And it’s like a hallucination in fact, very well may be under, in such a state what is known as hallucination may be the conceptualization processes effort to try recontrol this thing that has taken on a life of its own, unrecognizably, but yet totally real, more real than it’s ever been. You know what I’m saying? Now, what that meant is that when the process of conceptualization was artificially and temporarily suspended, when they came back in touch with that form of sensation which is actually in contact with reality. Instead of living in a world that is a secondary reflection through our conceptuality of the world, when it’s primarily in the world. And but, one can’t recognize where one is, in the way one is used to because the conceptualization won’t work. You follow me? So, the primary mental activity of all beings here, now to going through centuries to a later time in Buddhist history when they were analyzing the import of some of those early statements in very sophisticated ways as the great psychological scientists that they were, he has the primary mental activity being sense perception, unmediated and un-interfered with by any conceptualization. And beings have that going on all the time, but they don’t know it because they’re in their thoughts. They’re totally living in the interpretation of what they’re sensing, rather than what they’re sensing. Yes? Audience: I don’t know if you’ve read some of the articles about recent developments for our fighter pilots in terms of the helmet that shows them a reduced form of reality? RT: Ah ha! I don’t, but I can imagine. Audience: The thing is when they’re flying at two thousand miles an hour, they have too much information to process by their usual methods of processing. So, an extra processing is put in to give them a simplified version on the screen of their helmet. So this seems to me almost an identical next step to what has already happened in nature. We get all the primitive information, we process it, simplify it according to a network of concepts, and we see that. RT: Yes. Absolutely. Audience: They go the next step now. RT: Absolutely. And, that makes it the next step more divorced from reality again. And therefore then they can kill million thousands, you know, because they’re removed from it, they don’t know. You follow me? So it’s very, very dangerous. In other words, just as our normal conceptualization, the fact that we live in it, is very – we live in our secondary mental activity at all the time, based on delusion, makes us kill, steal, et cetera. It makes us able to do all these things that we wouldn’t do if we really were connected. No one would ever kill another person, or being even, if they were feeling that being’s life equal to their life. In some unrecognizable way, they just somehow felt them as well as themselves, they couldn’t kill them.

[0:44:28.9] Only if they artificially simplify and reduce that being to like a physical coordinate can they then kill it as thoughtlessly, not think it, it’s not- it’s just a construct, you see? So while that constructural-ability gives a heightened power in dealing with a certain kind of unreal reality, it creates a heightened danger. But again, the danger is just not in the technology itself, the danger is in the same distortion that we have in our normal conceptualization is that we take our conceptualization for reality, right? If we knew that it was a distortion at the same time as we used it for some specific purpose. If we were fully aware of its unreality, you know, double exposure consciousness, then it would not, could not necessarily be harmful, it could be useful, you could use such a reduced thing, say to do surgery to heal somebody. Or you know, you could use it for benevolent purposes is what I’m saying. You wouldn’t get like into using it crazily like that. Yes? Audience: In Warren Chandsworth (?) [0:45:30.3] he makes a nice distinction, which at least worked well for me, when he talks about sensory reality and ultimate reality so that you can make those two distinctions and how we need to be able to live in both simultaneously. RT: Yeah, except this- with the Buddhist it’s opposite. Because actually the sensory reality is the ultimate reality. This is what’s so beautiful, you see. You see again, therefore it’s not the idea of you have t- Audience: … Sensory reality is in- RT: But that’s not sensory reality, that’s a conceptualized reality. You see, sensory reality- yeah, but, it’s, see, these modern people think they’re going to reinvent the wheel. These ancient epistemologists were very beyond modern. That’s what’s most interesting. Modern psychology is slowly going to discover them. But sensory reality is itself ultimate reality. And the conceptualized one is the superficial reality what they call. And but the- (Audio cuts and resumes) … into the conceptualized one. And then that’s where the problem comes. So if one can return to that primary mental activity by an elaborate critical process of critiquing the pretension and the exaggerated status of the conceptualized reality, one becomes enlightened. So then again, in that epistemology, the progress to enlightenment as is presented not as the creation of something new that was not there before, but is presented as the uncovering of what was potential there before, already there. So that you are finding your actual self when you find selflessness, you’re not throwing away your actual self and making a new one. You see, that’s a very crucial element. Yes? Audience: The primary mental function is sensory. And the essential consciousness, or real consciousness and sensory consciousness. and that’s simply obscured by conceptualization, then why not a practice of meditation that seeks to suspend conceptualization. Rimpoche: Conceptualization? RT: Nam do. Rimpoche: Oh.

RT: There is no why not out of that. That’s an important kind of meditation. It helps to some degree, but- conceptualization is not so easily suspended, A. B first, sensory reality concludes what is called the sixth sense, a mental sense. (Rimpoche speaks quietly to RT) Rimpoche: Sixth sense? RT: Sixth sense, right, ma no (Tibetan phrase) [0:48:13.1] yi gi she wa. The sixth sensory perception includes a mental perception, not through the five senses. There’s a sixth sense, A. So sensory is second first more complicated. And second, conceptualization is more complicated, that is, if you- those meditations you talk about, they simply suppress the coarse flow of thought. There are deeper programs. Conceptualizations much deeper that they don’t touch. You see, when you don’t think, but yet you still- for example, I’m practicing thoughtless meditation. And then you do a thing where you cancel any thought that arises in your mind, okay? But, how about the sense of yourself as being there meditating? How about the sense of recognizing a thought that’s arising? How about the sense that you’re et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that you’re in a state of no thought? All of that is a deeper conceptualization that has completely got you. It’s like a deep program. You know, like you erase on the computer all sorts- you take your software out, but the hardwire, program is there. So if you don’t use that conceptualization to really surgically, elaborately unravel the deep conceptualization, you leave it untouched. And this is why there’s so many people who are adept at thought-free meditation. I know even people who are abbots of Zen monasteries, great masters, supposedly, and who definitely achieved ability not to have to think. And achieved certain benefits that go with that, certain calm, good vibrations of a certain kind, and then go out and behave in a very bad manner. Indicating plenty of egotism. Plenty of selfishness. Plenty of confusion. I know a lot of them. And that’s because they didn’t get out the deeper conceptualization about the self. They didn’t get out the gut feeling, and then not only that, it’s terrible because in the gut feeling of “I am me”, becomes, “oh, now I’m enlightened me because I don’t think! Now I can do whatever I feel like because I’m enlightened.”

[0:50:20.4] A very dangerous megalomaniac form of conceptualization. Do you follow me? What? Audience: Bodhi? What is that? RT: Where is bodhi? Buddhi or bodhi? You mean buddhi from Sanskrit, buddhi? Audience: It’s like intellect? RT: Yeah, buddhi means intellect, yes. Audience: And it’s not the same as bodhi? Like in bodhisattva? RT: No, bodhi is enlightenment, beyond intellect as well as non-intellect, as well as thoughtlessness. Beyond thought and thoughtlessness. Not just thoughtlessness. Buddhi is a functioning conceptually. Then there’s a deeper set buddhi, which is like deeper programming. See the attaining enlightenment means completely rewiring the entire nervous system. The nervous system is wrongly wired what is meant about I, I? I, I is not just I, I in a thought. They say that when someone- for example, you want to find I, I, get angry. Let someone kick you one. Even when you don’t- especially when you don’t deserve it, when you’ve been nice. Then suddenly, I! I! I! I! I is like a knot, it’s a knot in your solar plexus. Even you’re not thinking I. Even you’re semi-lobotomized, you have no words. If someone kicks you, there’s that big knot in the solar plexus, you go nuts. Your sense of yourself as the center of existence is very powerfully knotted in there. Now, just by suppressing the thought flow, you might feel a bit better. But you cannot unravel that knot. Only way you can unravel that knot is by taking conceptually, like as our friend said, that’s a very nice contribution, you have to get even helmet, even high tech, analytical, psychological helmet to even more simplify microscopes and the Buddhist psychologist develop mental microscopes, mental telescopes, mental x-ray machines. Ancient time, you need that high tech equipment to go into the heart, into the central nervous system. Deep into the culture, deep into your programming, into your guts and unravel the knot of egotism. In short, there’s nothing wrong with thoughtless meditation, you know thought-free, or thought suppression of meditation. It is useful. It is said to be the antidote for anxiety. And distraction of mind. But- and it’s used, you know, like counting the breath and so forth to kind of calm down. But enlightenment is far beyond a temporary calming down in a certain state. And if you just attach to thought-free meditation it becomes like a tranquilizer covering over the underlying problems. Do you follow me? So that you need much more than that, unfortunately. It’s a much more distant journey that one goes on. Audience: You say you rewire at this level, um, are you still functioning at that level? You’re still keeping yourself- you’re still having that conceptualization crisis go on. Rewiring is- RT: Yes. Yes. Now this is where we got into this where we were saying that about, before the prime mental activity, fun with the Dignaga, with the epistemology. The conceptualization process is, can be reappropriated from an enlightened point of view, and used as the tool that it is. Once you are free of it using you as a tool.

[0:53:57.6] Certainly. And this is why I was objecting to these people the other day who say Buddha doesn’t think. Buddha can’t think, they want to say. Those who take thought-freedom being, no thought, as being some sort of enlightened state, then project from there and say Buddha can’t think, you know? Well you just rooted out all your thoughts, you never think. Buddha doesn’t think, he just hops around. Ridic- Buddha thinks! He thinks the whole history of the universe. He thinks elaborate plan for entire nation and planet and galaxy. He thinks bodies all over the place. He thinks incarnations that run around. Buddha can think in tremendously, much greater than we can think. Why should the perfection of evolution be deprived of thinking? Give me a break. That’s an animal can’t think, you know? Primitive animal can think only moderately. Yes? We should stop because we’re taking all Rimpoche’s time. Audience: I just want to make one point that it seems to me, concepts are actually very important because we have- we can call them precepts. And the whole idea of meditating on the voidness, or emptiness of emptiness and so forth, is like a- in a certain way, serves a function of keeping us from getting trapped. RT: Exactly. Audience: …in any particular realm, or any particular- RT: Reification. Audience:… state of mind, or reification of nothingness or so forth. And if one holds to that precept, one can’t stay there. RT: Yeah, it’s like a targeting- Audience: You sort of always go on. RT: Right. Partially. And partially there is of course, there are- the realization itself, wisdom itself, is beyond of course, just mere thinking. Wisdom is not a thought, I am selfless. It’s beyond that. But it has to be targeted very carefully. It’s like, when you shoot the rocket, you’re no longer aiming it. But if you don’t aim it in the right direction, it’ll go, it will come back and hit you. The other famous example is, if you want to light the fire of wisdom, it burns wood, right? The fire of wisdom does burn up wood. But how do you light it? This is in the era before lighters, you know, Zippo. You have to take some pieces of wood and rub them together, you know? You grind together some pieces of wood until they get hot. And then the leaf, and then the spark, and then those pieces are the first to burn. But you can’t light a fire by throwing away the wood. Even though it burns the wood. You follow me? This is another famous example of why you need actually thought to become free of thought both deep level, as well as surface level. Yes? Audience: I have to think about this other form of meditation, and what is it that you’re calling it, because I’ve heard analytical, I’ve heard analogical… RT: Right. Analytical, mainly. Analogical again is a different thing. Analytical meditation is what in general it’s called. Transcendent insight, it’s sometimes called. Insight meditation, even it’s simply called, sometimes. There are different terminologies. In the Western- the Sanskrit word is vipassana, which is that vipassana that you hear about from Burma a lot, it connects to that, that’s a form of the same thing. And lhaktong in Tibetan. Analytical in the sense of discursive, you know? It’s programmatic. Although, the particular analytical one in relation to wisdom is programmed to deprogram. It’s kind of very subtle and complicated. It’s the difficult one.

Audience: I guess my question is just very, very basic (Inaudible) [0:57:55.4] RT: That’s Rimpoche’s job. The three principle paths comes as the third path to the systematic way something he called the four keys, how to reflect upon selflessness in a sort of systematic, how to sit down, and how to- you know, each step. Step by step. This is talking about the result and about bringing actually, bringing us into it actually. This is throwing us into it. But sort of, the way to approach and contextualize, that’s why we’re doing these two things together, you see. I think it’s also important to be thrown into it. Because otherwise you sort of just think this like this. But it’s also you have to have like a simple step, too. Both, But now, I’m sorry, we can go off because we’re having a meditation, analytical meditation on wisdom, so we can all go on until doomsday. But since we want to come to now the path and we want to deal with the compassion part, we’ll take five minutes meditation and we’ll then take a break, for five to ten, and then we’ll spend the rest of the time on the three principle paths, compassion teaching. Sorry for being- the questions got too long. I didn’t mean to. (Bell rings) [0:59:08.6] (Rimpoche and RT joke in Tibetan, bell rings) RT: Carried away on the currents of four mighty streams, tightly bound by the near inescapable chains of evolution. Trapped and imprisoned in the iron cage of self concern. Totally wrapped in the darkness of misknowledge. Born and born again and again in endless life cycles, uninterruptedly tormented by the three miseries. Such is the state of all beings, all just your mothers. From your natural feelings, conceive the highest spirit. Rimpoche: Thank you. (Discusses in Tibetan with RT) Okay. Now we are here. Okay, the verse, I mean that is where we are, what we have just read is the verse in these three principle of the path that gives the bodhi altruistic spirit of enlightenment. Okay, that is in other words, what they call it bodhi mind. In other words they call it bodhisattvas thoughts. Or whatever they may call it. And that is the ultimate love and ultimate compassion. And that’s what this is describing. Now, until now, we have these two things going on. As a matter of fact, I think it’s really interesting and good. As a matter of fact, we go this vast philosophical thoughts as well as the true reality, the true situation of vast thing, and also you have to put them together and have to handle that. I mean, all this vast knowledge and information whatever we’re dealing, is also it’s very important to gain as knowledge and information. And also, it is not very useful if it remains as information and knowledge and don’t utilize them for individual to handle with one’s mind and to gain spiritual development. Interestingly, I’ve been noticing here, here particularly in the Omega where I see a lot of different people. And people have now- I mean, maybe I’m wrong. People have now, sort of come, and get thinking the spiritual development is such a sort of thing, status of the mind, or it is some kind of way easy to how to handle, and it’s sort of label around here, you’re sort of floating around, and then that’s about it. That’s what I’m- somehow I’m getting the message very strange way, that’s what I’m getting it, you know, by looking at the people, talking, hearing, and observing. I’m getting that message.

[1:03:49.5] I hope I’m not right. And if it’s so, and that’s a total mistake again. I must tell you the spiritual stand is not like that at all. This is sort of, you builds up with you, there is endless level you can go up. And it goes up and farther and farther. And simultaneously, together when your spiritual development goes up, the symptoms of it will also goes up, you know? The symptoms of it, it reading other’s mind, getting, knowing the future, and controlling your mind, behaving better way, functioning better way, it all simultaneously goes together. So please, I hope I’m a mistake. If I’m not, then must think that spiritual development is just floating around as a people now imagine here in the Omega around. Looking at the spiritual masters, and looking at spiritual followers, and looking at the speakers, and looking at listeners, and looking at the questioners, and looking at the meditators, and looking at therapies, and all this, I’m getting that message. If that is correct, then again, you have totally misunderstood spiritual path. So anyway, that’s that. That’s my observation. But, now, all this- you know, why? Because utilization of a spiritual information to a better development has been not been properly handled. That’s why you’re getting that. You have a simple way, I mean- for example, the meditation. Take a meditation, okay. Meditation is very, very important thing. However, when I talk to meditation, and when you think of meditation, you immediately started thinking and sitting down and removing your thoughts. And I’m not you as individual, but- I really mean a lot of general people will immediately taking that stance. So, till somebody comes here and say, hey- this is not only this analytical meditation is meditation. Hey- blah, blah, blah all this till it comes and you’re getting that sort of, you know, stuck in there, that’s not right. The spiritual thing is so much. I mean, the buddhahood has enlightened total enlightened level. That’s what I’m trying to say here, the enlightened is also you’re taking very cheap. Samadhi level, some people try to use that as enlightened. Even the understanding of shunyata, some people will try to make that as an enlightened. They are all totally false. Sorry to say that, but yeah, it’s beyond that it’s much, much beyond that. So, this is only because you have not been utilize those, so I try to, I try not to go into the detailed talk, what I’m trying to do is I will try to collect all the informations and channelize that how to handle it. So there what you have to handle is, it is war. You have to go to the war. You have to be warrior. Yeah, really. It is war between the wisdom and ignorance. It is the war between the you and the opponent. It is the war between the enlightenment and a stupidity. It is the war between the positive and negative. So, I mean, the method how you do is, it is the you are the in the middle. It’s sort of, they try to pull the- let me put this way. The evil side try to pull each individual out in their direction. The better side try to pull, as I see in the movies, they call it light side and dark sides, okay? (Laughs) I mean, that’s really that way. They try to pull this way.

[1:08:53.1] So how you do is the all the, sort of- you have to dialogue with yourself. You have to suggest, you have to talk, you have to pore informations, and information has to be channelized, and made available to you, and you have to use them as a weapon whenever you need, whenever you encounter your obstacle, that’s what it is. And if you can’t do that, if you have all the information posted in all the different books and different tape recorders and tapes and all this, and here you struggle, and then you have to when you become a practice, if you have to rely on all this sitting and watching thoughts it be a bit bad. So, now, up to here, what we have shu ji (Speaks in Tibetan) [1:09:52.2] up to here we talk about our own situation. Our sufferings, renunciation, and we have to renounce, give a reasons, and how and all this we have talked. We furthermore, these particularly important here, is Tsongkhapa’s technique he has this three principle of the path. When here we talk the bodhicitta, we also talk the renunciation based bodhicitta. So how shu si ji (Quotes in Tibetan) [1:10:24.9] is a stream which has carried you, I mean- sort of my translation is horrible, but first word. You have been driving by the full current, carried or something like that, isn’t it? RT: Yes, carried by. Rimpoche: The paper is with you, in front of you. RT: First line. Rimpoche: First line, okay. That is not only the others, our self is also the same condition. You have to think that way, okay? We, yourself is same condition. We’ve been carried away by powerful four current. Okay. The four current, when you talk about four current, there are two different ways of talking the four current. The caused way, and the result way. The result, the four current is the- Audience: (Inaudible) Rimpoche: Good. Result. RT: Causal way. Causal way and results way. Rimpoche: The result is birth, death, sicknesses, and old age. These are the four currents of the result. I mean, it’s not really. We’ve been carried away within this current. And I need help of yours because- (Lists in Tibetan) [1:12:07.1] RT: Causes ignorance, craving, ignorance, false view, stream of ignorance, stream of false view, stream of craving, and stream of identity habits. Or really, identity. Rimpoche: These are the four crosscurrent. In other words, continuation of death, continuation of illness, continuation of birth, continuation of aging, et cetera, are result of those four things, whatever we have mentioned here. So we have been sort of sweeped through this current. Okay, I’m going to make short. (Quotes in Tibetan) [1:13:00.0] Suppose if you’re carried by a current, but if your hand and legs are loose and free, you can wrap in things and do like that, and you’ll be not sink, you may not die, you may be able to come out. But you cannot, your hands been tied and legs been tied by rope of karma. Chains of the karma, sho da (Quotes in Tibetan) [1:13:27.3] RT: Which are hard to get rid of. Rimpoche: Yeah, it is very hard to get out. So it is tight. You understand now? I mean, you have to visualize yourself in that manner now. Even you are tight and even you have sort of, even you are tight and you’re carried, even then you may be able to move a little bit, and sort of you can manipulate it a little bit in the water. But unfortunately, you are put in the cage, iron cage. RT: Like Houdini! Rimpoche: What is it? RT: You know you throw themselves off a bridge in a cage with chains. Rimpoche: That’s right, cho ja chu ji (Quotes in Tibetan) [1:14:17.6] So you are put in the iron cage, so you cannot manipulate anything in the water, even by other physical mean. And you are totally caught, because you know, in the water you cannot manipulate, you are just cut it again.

[1:14:39.5] (Continues in Tibetan) RT: It is the iron cage of self concern, or imprisoned in the iron cage of self concern. Self habit, literally. Rimpoche: The next word tells you, even then, if you’re through with all this condition in iron cage, in the water, if it’s daytime, you can scream and shout and somebody may hear you, right? And you may be able to see and try to do something, but unfortunately, it is in the darkness. Right? Har a za (Speaks to RT in Tibetan) [1:15:25.1] it is the darkness of a ignorance, it’s from all the direction. From all the direction, you don’t have a single light anywhere where you can look. It is totally in the darkness. That darkness is ignorance, we have that. That’s why we behave totally different- we’re always, what we wanted, we want happiness, we want pleasure, we want harmonies. But what we are doing we’re always creating cause of unhappiness, misery, and all this we do. Why? Because we are stuck in the darkness, ma (Quotes in Tibetan) [1:16:10.6] Because of that, (Repeats quote) the countless life after life, we continuously go. Life after life, we continuously go. That’s why they said there’s no beginning. Keep on going, we are going it, going it, going it. And every time we are victim of suffering of suffering, which you know, the pain, physical pains, these are when you break your ankle, then you get physical pain. That is the suffering of suffering. Then you have changing suffering. Which looks like pleasure but it gives you a problem, which is the what we enjoy. If you have too much of it, you get all the problems. That’s why it is changing suffering. And pervasive. Every moment, everywhere, every place, we call it, cha be du che (Tibetan phrase) [1:17:31.8] It is cause of suffering, it creates suffering, and it is in by nature, but we may not feel it. It’s why I say our man-made problems have covered other deeper problems, you don’t get a chance to look in those because of manmade problems that keep us too preoccupied. So our most difficult suffering that we have to get is the pervasive suffering. It is more difficult than anything, any other things. Suffering suffering’s easy because when you get a pinch here you get a feel of hurt so you, oh, no, I don’t want that! You can easily say. Changing suffering’s more hard, because you like to enjoy that sometimes. If you feel so hot outside, you would like to get into the air conditioned room and get yourself cooled. And instead there’d be too longer and you get cold and this and that, and catching cold, and god knows what else. So you don’t want to get out. And all this, and so, you like to enjoy, but you also realize the change. I’m talking about very rough level so that we can- I like to talk on the ground, you know, really. Sort of, you know, so we can see. We can see it, we can feel it. That’s how it works, changing suffering. The pervasive suffering you don’t even realize, I mean, it’s not within our imaginative yet at this level. So actually, it is the causing from there, it is everywhere we have. So we have been victim of these three sufferings for countless lives. Countless lives.

[1:19:33.3] And, if we do not take care of now, we will have much more. Much more than what we’ve been through, we will go through. So as we have mentioned, opportunity, availability of method, knowing of it, seeing, hearing, ability to be able to practice, it’s very rare. And at this moment, if you do not utilize, when are you going to take care of that problem? And this is a much deeper problem than American Express bill. Yeah, really. This thing is you’re going to pay through your flesh and blood. It’s not going to pay by your check. It’s hard. And if you don’t take care of now, when will you have a chance to take care of it? You have to, I mean really. Unless you’re crazy. You have to take care of that. Not only me, in that situation, but my beloved friend the dear, the dearest is also in that situation. The person that I care, all are in that same situation as I am. What they want? They want happiness. What they’re creating? They’re creating suffering. It’s like that, your most dearest person that you care and you knew, you knew that person is sick, you know that person has diabetes or something, and you knew the sugar is bad for it, so you can’t stop, he or she keep on eating the sugar all the time. So how can you watch in there and let he or she take all the sugar, you can’t. Can you? You know she going to die, he or she. So you have to stop, somehow eating the sugar. Similarly, we’re in that condition. If you look spiritually, this is the true situation. Not only them, me too. You and me in same boat. Same boat. That’s the situation. So would you like to sit there and watch? Or would you like to do something? Would you like to do something for yourself? Or would you like to do something for the person you care? Or you just want to sit and watch that going to hell? A respectable, honorable person, as we all are, we just don’t want watch and let the people go down, can we? No. Not only the person that we care the most in the same condition but couldn’t care less people are also the same condition. Person of the medium level. Which we don’t care. They’re also in the same condition. Not only those of the person who are who- the medium level people, whatever we call it. Careless person, which we don’t care. It’s also this condition, but our enemies are also in the same condition. So why, how can I sit here and watch them all singing, and doing nothing. If I don’t care for my enemies, or even the middle person, but I care for the people I do care. That is my dearest, nearest, relations and parents and so and forth, person that I know, person that I love. I do care. If you don’t care, you don’t love them. If you love them, you do care for it. Right?

[1:25:50.9] I may consider at this moment, well, let the enemies go to hell, doesn’t matter. But what about the person I care? So that’s why it is the true situation of our self a true situation of almost everybody else. If you see somebody who’s having a tremendous physical pain, won’t you feel sorry for that person? Won’t you develop some desire to help that person? Unless you are bad-hearted, or hard- you heart is very hard. Unless that you do care for that. Right? So in true situation, you, me, and every living beings are in much worse than physical pain. All these three sufferings, three pains have tied us so much down. Whole process of our life is pain. Whole process. The birth is pain. The living is pain. The death is pain. The aging is pain. I told you. One good thing is aging is slowly coming. That’s why we can bear it. If it’s come all of a suddenly overnight, imagine a young beautiful youth, all of a suddenly next morning if it changes what would you do? You’ll go crazy jump out of the window, probably. But that doesn’t cut that pain, that pain continues. That is how you have to talk to yourself. That is how you, when you touch with yourself, that is how you apply this weapon on that ignorance. Okay? Now the second step, now- when you see yourself, I’m sorry- when you see yourself in that condition, when you see yourself in your person you love the most in that condition, what do you feel at your heart? Feel pinch and pain. That’s your love. That’s your love, that’s your compassion, it’s symptom of your love, a symptom of compassion for you and for others. For other that you care most. Okay, now the bodhicitta, the second important part here, whatever we call here- altruistic spirit of enlightenment, okay? Okay, that one, it doesn’t grow like that (Snaps) It really a step by step process. The Maitreya have said, ti wa (Quotes in Tibetan) [1:29:52.9] root of this is great compassion.

[1:30:00.8] What is- (Laughs) time to go. What is great compassion? What is different between the ordinary compassion and great compassion? Ordinary compassion is if you have compassion on yourself, or for A, B, C, D. But great compassion is compassion equal to all living beings. Equal to all living beings. Mind you, every single living beings that’s includes not only your enemies, but the tiger in the jungle and cockroach in kitchen. All of them. The lobsters in the sea. All of them. All living beings. So when you talk about that, it’s easy to talk, difficult to practice. Easy to say, all living beings. Okay, easy to say for benefit of all sentient living beings. This is a person like me who have been in the Buddhist, fortunately, who had been in the Buddhist practice for a while, can have that lip service of for the benefit of all sentient beings is on my lip. But it’s very easy to say. Even the parrot can say that. If you feed a parrot, I always talk my friends about this. I had a friend, you know- don’t name it, you know the person, he had been around here, you know that. We’ve been talking earlier that particular person.